Non Farm Payrolls gets released this morning. Some outlets have pointed out an expected”beat” by BLS.

As we have long advocated, investors should be more concerned with the details than the headline, and watch for signs of a change in trend.A plus or minus 100k from the consensus is all but statistically irrelevant.

Be aware of the revisions, and Birth/death adjustment: Watch to see how much this impacts the overall number.

Look at these three leading indicators within the release:

1) Hours worked: Are employers still cutting back hours? That is a sign they lack confidence going forward.

2) Wages and income: Are salaries still falling? It reveals how much demand there is for labor.

3) Temp help: Are employers starting to hire temporary workers?

These will provide some insight into the state of the Labor market.

~~~

I will be sitting in a canoe when these numbers come out. Use comments to update the release . . .

Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor implied. If you could repeat previously discredited memes or steer the conversation into irrelevant, off topic discussions, it would be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.

321 Responses to “Trend, Not a Single Data Point”

>>The workforce goes up by 150,000 per month on average and has been doing so for years.<<

Yes and nothing has changed in the last 6 month that could possibly have switched that trend?? All those buy out retirement packages that have been announced by big companies and city/county/state governments trying to deal with the problems created by a contracting economy could not possibly change that trend? No 150K to eternity and back ;-)

The things you do or don’t think about reveals you as a right wingnut, and that’s the way it is.

Vilgrad & Dedude – great spirited debate, could you guys please (just for me) dispense with the name calling? If ya can’t make a point without resorting to an insult then don’t bother to make the point.

ok…useless prediction for last 42 minutes of trading….we stage a tepid little rally at the bottom of the hour on front running before the 3.50pm pump, but fail into 1016 and we then collapse into the close. I’m using the pear-shaped close on CL as the canary in the coal mine for today….

cvienne; sorry I would never question YOUR patriotism. I like you even if I disagree with you most of the time :- You at least put forward arguments in a debate. I have just had so much of that patriotism shot at me during the Bush years that I connot help but send it back when I get a mostly rightwing audience.

I spent years as a personal trainer…90% of my clients were women…At some point I always had to level with them, look them straight in the eye and say…”You basically have two choices…do you want to be a BIGGER or a SMALLER pear?”…

Just because people are taking “early retirement” packages (aka – all too often – take this or be laid off) doesn’t mean they’re truly retiring, or able to. They’re just taking what they can get and then have to figure out how to either make some money elsewhere or live on the income that gives them.

You’ve seen the numbers on what the average BB has saved, and you know the terrible condition of pensions (more of which are disappearing thru corporate bankruptcies). These early retirement packages aren’t often very fat and generous except for a sliver at the top of the ladder in corporate America.

Believe what you want, but I think it’s doubtful that you can attribute a large portion of this net labor force reduction to normal BB demographics. But I appreciate your balanced and questioning viewpoint.

I get you on the “Bush Patriotism” thing…(the over-zealous nature – not so much about the MAN, but the MISSION – it always came off as “biblical” or something)…

You know it’s funny…I was as indifferent about Bush as I am about Obama…It was EASY being indifferent about Bush, because I lived out of the country for most of his term…

I can imagine, though, 8 years of “pent-up” frustration if you were on the other side…It’s hard NOT to let that skew your approach…Let things settle in a little…See what happens…12 years of living in Italy reconciled me to that view…

Vilgrad or is that Vilundergrad? You don’t even seem capable of understanding the concept of “filling water in a bucket with a hole in it”. So lets bring it down to gradeschool level and hope you get it this time. Obama promised to create 3-4 million jobs over the 2 years the stimulus package last, we are about a quarter into that period. The reason he wanted a stimulus package was not that emplyment was stable and he wanted another 3-4 million jobs added to a stable number of jobs. It was because the jobmarket was collapsing and he wanted to stop the skyrocketing of unemployment.

This is the best I can do, if you don’t get it yet then I will be happy to give you a referral to the nearest kindergarden. Then your stupidity has truly exceeded my arrogance and that is no small task ;-)

My name is Jim Quinn. I started TheBurningPlatform in February of this year. Barry, Mish, and John Mauldin were my inspiration.

I’m strident in my views. We have 933 members and we are getting about 60,000 visits per month. The debates are quite sprited and I think entertaining. It isn’t restricted to finance. We battle over politics, religion, and economics.

I thought Bush was the worst President in history. I think Obama has a chance to top him. I despise Greenspan as much as Barry does.

Dedude – fair enough – but considering most of the stimulus money hasn’t be spent yet, how much of that stimulus money can be attributed to the fall in jobless claims? How much of it is due to nothing more than being in a specific phase of the business cycle?

Give me a break. Please show me the quote from Obama saying he would save the jobs over 2 years. I will be waiting for a long long time, because he never said it. this is the Orwellian doublespeak that Obama and his band of merry men are now spinning. I hate to tell you. Unemployment is skyrocketing. Remember the fake stress tests that Obama used to calm the masses. The unemployment rate is already higher than their worst case scenario. Below are his actual words. Keep believing in the savior he is never wrong.

Does everyone crush you like a walnut on this site?

OBAMA SPEECH IN FEBRUARY 2009

“Millions more Americans will lose their jobs. Homes will be lost. Families will go without health care. Our crippling dependence on foreign oil will continue. That is the price of inaction.”

“I believe that legislation of this enormous magnitude, that by necessity we are moving quickly — we’re not moving quickly because we’re trying to jamb something down people’s throats. We’re moving quickly because we’re told that if we don’t move quickly, that the economy is going keep on getting worse, and we’ll have another 2 or 3 or 4 million jobs loss this year.This plan will save or create over three million jobs — almost all of them in the private sector.”

Anyone notice that Bloomberg has a bad data feed for the television? They are showing the Dow at +126 when it’s actually +121. Earlier they had it at +133 when it was +124. Can’t trust anyone these days.

I’m still watching initial claims but at some point the layoffs have to taper off but im more interested in continuing claims (despite the way that number is goosed) and the number of people exhausting theyre extended claims.

Thor; It will be just about impossible to figure out exactly how much of the fall in unemployment can be attributed the stimulus package. However, the Obama administration has given some fairly detailed instruction to all the recipients of stimulus money to report any new hirering payed by that money. So eventually it will be possible to document the exact number of jobs, and how long they lasted. This is the difference between Bush and Obama. Obama actually want to know because he is building his policies on facts, not ideology. He already has and will continue to make mistakes, but he will do a lot better than Bush because he want to understand and make policy based on facts.

Vilgrad;

“This plan will save or create over three million jobs — almost all of them in the private sector.”

And the plan was a 2-year plan, right?, not only did he not state it would save three million jobs in 3 months or a year, but it is obvious that since the expense is spreed over 2 years the effects would be expected to come over that same period.

Can you read? HE SAYS – IF YOU DON’T PASS HIS PLAN, WE”LL LOSE 2 or 3 or 4 million jobs THIS YEAR. He did not reference next year. He said this year. It is now July and we’ve lost 2.9 million jobs. We will reach his 4 million number by the end of the year. Congress passed his bill and we will lose 4 million jobs.

Now here is where the Orwellian Obama spin comes in. If we didn’t pass his $767 billion porkulus monstrosity, we would have lost 7 million jobs. Therefore, the savior saved 3 million jobs. Is that the hole in your bucket big guy?

Bring it on. I’ll leave you in a heap of smoldering ashes.

“We’re moving quickly because we’re told that if we don’t move quickly, that the economy is going keep on getting worse, and we’ll have another 2 or 3 or 4 million jobs loss THIS YEAR.This plan will save or create over three million jobs — almost all of them in the private sector.”

Well…that’s the end of my day. For bigger picture technical types, the 38.2% actually held today and the bulls have a little more shadow on the daily candlestick than they would like to see (but, hey it’s a Friday.) The Nasdaq, undisputed leader of the markets this year, failed to make a new high. Crude put up a pretty nasty daily candle today and does not look good. The dollar put in a very impressive week. With record Treasury auctions coming, I think the SP500 gets beat up a bit next week. That said, the bears have a long road to travel to turn this medium term equity picture bearish….

“It is now July and we’ve lost 2.9 million jobs. We will reach his 4 million number by the end of the year”

Talking at a time when the last available monthly job loss was 741,000 his doomsday number of 2-4 million was obviously not referring to a fear that the total for the year could come to 2-4 million. The fear was that inaction would allow the economy to sink so bad that we would get ANOTHER (i.e. additional) 2-4 million jobs lost.

I guess you didn’t bother with advanced classes in logic or english at Vilanova ;-)

After about the 2nd exchange of insults and ad hominem irrelevancy, I stop reading puerile posts such as yours and DeDude’s. There’s more heat than light and little or nothing is added to the discourse. I don’t give a sh*t about what you think of other commenters or their opinions of you, only about the substance of the respective arguments.

“on Seeking Alpha.., I’m attacked and vilified constantly”
Get used to it, respond to reasoned argument, and let the rest go. You’ll get more respect in the long run.

So in February Obama knew that we had lost 740K jobs and he must have known about the 680K that would come out for February, that is 1.42 million right there. Everybody knew that there was no way the money ould get out and have any effect for March (say another 600K at least). And you want us to believe that he was trying to persuade the congress that we had to pass the stimulus or else we could end up with a doomsday scenario of 2 million jobs lost for the year ???

well. crude sort of went pear-shaped into the close…i guess GS has sucked enough clients into the long oil/commodity trade, at least for this week.

reply:
———-
Noooo. As long as a speculative dollar is available to be sucked out of somebody’s pocket, oil will rise like a bottle rocket from China. It will only go down if the stock market crashes AND stock buys are leveraged. Otherwise, it will really take off as the only place to make a buck in a bear market reasserting itself. Competent regulation will be the only thing capable of killing oil.

Don’t lay it all on my foot – I only had a dozen of the 270. I think it was all the action on wall street today that garnered so much activity; and the fact that no other treads were natural for taking that stuff. Anyway y’all enjoy your week-end.

And I am sorry, but when someone comes in and promotes their own website using a synonym, I do get pi$$ed and I can get drawn into a pi$$ing contest (even if I generally believe that Trolls should be ignored).

Hope none of you are short sugar. That thing has gone parabolic on Indian drought….and I while I normally look for reasons to short such things on a spike, there’s nothing about that market, technically, that makes we want to short it. So, let’s say a little prayer for our brethren who might be on the pointy end of that stick. Ugh.

andy, lol, thanks for the sugar info..i have so much to tell but no one would find it interesting. for instance, yesterday, i got in a creative mood and moved 3, large, clay, olive oil urns to a better location.. i have an aquaduct with no water, so each urn now stands in front of a pillar.. don’t know why i never thot of it before yesterday.

another spectacular happening i can report.. this afternoon, charley, my son’s friend, jumped off the balcony into the pool, first time anyone has ever attempted it… i can’t wait till they email me the video.. and he did it repeatedly..

Your responses are endlessly entertaining. Was I promoting my site using a synonym or a pseudo name?

Does Obama know unemployment numbers before the rest of us? Oh I forgot. He is the savior. He knows everthing.

He has wasted $767 billion of our tax dollars and passed the bill onto future generations without creating one job in the private sector. Those are the facts big guy. But don’t let facts get in the way of your beliefs and rhetoric.

Vilgrad, i appreciate your sincere attempt to educate.. and I applaud your continuing effort.. but they just print the money up, it’s not really being stolen from the taxpayer.. that’s just rhetoric to give the $ value…

I know they are just printing it up, but it does have implications. A dollar is only worth something if people and other countries believe it is worth something. When they realize we will print for all eternity, it will collapse. Most people’s net worth is tied up in dollars. They won’t be too happy when they are left with 10% of what they thought they had.

Vilg, I don’t know if O’B did the right thing but doing nothing would have been the wrong thing. The same people who were silent during 8 consecutive years of record Bush deficits spring to life the first record O’B deficit. If only Bush had followed the Clinton pattern of balanced budgets we would have been better positioned to cope with this Bush/Greenspan created crisis.

My hopes of O’B dumping BB and Turbo Timmy are fading with this orchestrated stock bubble.

I agree that Bush was a disaster. Both parties deserve to be blamed for the disaster.

Our beloved numbskull Vice President Joe Biden said last week, “We have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt”. President Bush said, “I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free market system”. President Obama insisted that the only way to save our country from catastrophe caused by excessive debt was to borrow $700 billion and spend it on infrastructure projects, of which only 3.5% was allocated to our crumbling infrastructure.

We are running a $2 trillion deficit this year. The average American doesn’t get it:

They are spending $5.5 billion per day more than they are bringing in.

They are spending $228 million per hour more than they are bringing in.

They are spending $3.8 million per minute more than they are binging in.

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About Barry Ritholtz

Ritholtz has been observing capital markets with a critical eye for 20 years. With a background in math & sciences and a law school degree, he is not your typical Wall St. persona. He left Law for Finance, working as a trader, researcher and strategist before graduating to asset managementRead More...

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